You are here: Home / Archives for low-performing schools

Do parents need a trigger — or choices?

September 28, 2012 by

Won’t Back Down — Hollywood’s parent (and teacher) trigger movie, premieres today. A documentary it’s not, but its emotional appeal is likely to move the debate. Think of Erin Brockovich for school reform.

Can parents do a better job of running their children’s schools? Neerav Kingsland, CEO of New Schools for New Orleans, is sympathetic but concerned, he writes on Title I-derland.

Specifically, I worry that Parent Trigger laws will be better at destroying bad schools than creating excellent schools. The crux of it is this: Parent Trigger laws combine two actions – (1) parent empowerment and (2) parent influence over management – when only the first action is necessary for real change. Moreover, involving parents in management may end up decreasing student achievement.

. . . The power to change doctors is an important power – the power to influence hospital management is less useful. I don’t know how to run a hospital, and I don’t wish to have the responsibility of guiding hospital management strategy bestowed upon me.

(In November, I’ll vote on the management of the local hospital district. I’ll have to figure out which way to go by then.)

New Orleans has lots of choices for parents, responds RiShawn Biddle on Dropout Nation, but it’s not typical:  Most parents have few or no affordable alternatives to the neighborhood school.

Biddle thinks parents will do a better job than school districts. I think parents who win a trigger vote (and the subsequent lawsuits) will hire a management team — probably from a charter network — and fire them if they don’t perform well.

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Making school turnarounds work

May 2, 2012 by

School Turnarounds by Heather Zavadsky looks at how districts are trying to improve chronically low-performing schools.

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: , ,

Time alone isn’t enough

April 2, 2012 by

Extending the school day without improving teaching won’t make much difference, concludes a new Education Sector report,  Off the Clock: What More Time Can (and Can’t) Do for School Turnarounds.

More than 90 percent of the schools receiving federal School Improvement Grants have chosen turnaround options that call for more class time. Some have added class time by shortening recess and lunch. Others have created after-school programs.

“New designs for extended time should be a part of the nation’s school improvement plans,” (author Elena) Silva concludes. “But policymakers and school leaders must recognize that successful schools use time not just to extend hours and days but to creatively improve how and by whom instruction is delivered.”

The limited research on extended learning time (ELT) shows only small effects on student achievement, the report concludes. “Schools that have succeeded with extended time have done so largely because they include time as part of a more comprehensive reform.” Just doing the same old thing for an extra 20 minutes a day isn’t going to help.

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Obama waives No Child Left Behind

September 23, 2011 by

President Obama will waive the key requirements of No Child Left Behind, he said today.  States won’t have to show students are achieving proficiency in reading and math by 2014.

States will set their own achievement goals and “design their own interventions for failing schools,” reports Ed Week.

In exchange for this flexibility, the administration will require states to adopt college- and career-ready standards, focus on 15 percent of their most-troubled schools, and create guidelines for teacher evaluations based in part on student performance.

In the 2012-13 school year, rules requiring low-performing schools to offer free tutoring and school choice will be waived.

In addition to intervening to change the lowest 5 percent of schools, state will be required “to identify another 10 percent of schools that struggle with particularly low graduation rates, low performance for specific subgroups of students (such as those with disabilities), or high achievement gaps.”

Schools that aren’t in the bottom 15 percent don’t need to make changes.

The plan is a “responsible framework” that gives states the flexibility, they’ve requested, notes Education Trust. States claimed they could do it better. Now “it’s time for them to stand and deliver.”

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: , , , , ,

Newark’s failing schools swap teachers

August 1, 2011 by

The $5 million turnaround plan for three low-performing Newark high schools required replacing half the teachers. Instead of letting principals hire new teachers, the schools swapped teachers. Some 68 teachers were shuffled among Malcom X Shabazz High, Central High School and Barringer High School, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis.

Shabazz, which employs 90 teachers, sent 21 to Barringer, which sent 21 over to Shabazz. Central teachers also ended up at Shabazz and Barringer, though the school didn’t take as many transfers.

“Federal money may have unintentionally funded the infamous ‘dance of the lemons’ that has been a harmful practice in districts for decades,” said Tim Daly, president of the New Teacher Project, a nonprofit group that helps school districts recruit teachers.

“If these teachers truly were not good enough for one struggling school, we have to ask whether it is a good idea to put them in another one,” he said.

Cami Anderson, who became superintendent in May, vows to stop the swaps, but it will cost money to pay the salaries of unwanted teachers. New Jersey law requires the district to pay tenured teachers, even if no principal will hire them.

Test scores are up significantly at Central High — let’s hope they’re not cheating — but have remained the same or lower at Barringer and Shabazz.

 

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: , , , ,

14 states consider 'parent trigger' laws

June 20, 2011 by

Fourteen states are debating “parent trigger” laws that would let dissatisfied parents force changes in low-performing schools. Most, but not all, include the option of turning over control to a charter operator.

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: , ,

Bad schools stay bad — and open

June 13, 2011 by

Are bad schools immortal? For all the talk of turnarounds, most bad schools stay bad — and stay open, concludes a Fordham study by David Stuit of Basis Policy Research.

Stuit tracked more than 2,000 low-performing charter and district schools across ten states from 2003-04 through 2008-09: 72 percent of low-performing charter schools and 80 percent of low-performing district schools showed little improvement and remained in operation. Only one percent met his definition of a “turnaround,” moving reading and math achievement from its state’s bottom decile to above the state average.

Charter schools started near low-performing schools are more likely to raise students’ reading and math achievement significantly, Stuit found.

Across ten states (Arizona, California, Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin), I located all incidents (between 2002-03 and 2006-07) of a charter school opening in close proximity to a district school that had reading and math proficiency rates in the bottom 10 percent of its state at the time the charter appeared in its neighborhood. To qualify as a fair match-up, the charter and district schools had to be the nearest neighboring public schools of the same type (elementary or middle) and be located less than three miles apart as the crow flies. The schools also had to be demographically similar, with no more than a 10 percentage point difference in their subsidized lunch and minority enrollments.

Nineteen percent of the charter schools tested above the state average in 2008-09, compared with 5 percent of district schools.

The sample size is small and selection bias can’t be ruled out, Stuit writes.  Furthermore, there aren’t nearly enough charters available to students in the lowest performing schools.

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: , , ,

Déjà vu on turnarounds

March 30, 2011 by

The feds are spending $3.5 billion in School Improvement Grants to “turnaround” the bottom 5 percent of schools. But we’ve tried this before with no success, writes Rick Hess, who warns, We’re not learning from our mistakes.

Avoiding Déjà Vu: Lessons from the Federal Comprehensive School Reform Program for the Current School Turnaround Agenda discussed a new WestEd report (pdf), on the Comprehensive School Reform Demonstration Program (CSRD).

First enacted in 1998, and wrapped into No Child Left Behind, CSRD required low-performing schools to implement eleven “school reform” components in return for federal funds. The eleven entailed: proven methods and strategies, comprehensive design, professional development, measurable goals, support from staff members, support for staff members, parent and community involvement, external assistance, evaluation, coordination of resources, and scientifically based research. Good stuff, right? Thoughtful, based on careful research, backed by new funding, yada yada.

The results? Dismal.

Compared to similar schools, CSR schools were less likely to implement the 11 reform elements; the “reformed” schools showed no gains in reading or math over a five-year period.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s new SIG model for turnarounds won’t work either, Hess predicts. Charter operators aren’t eager to take on very bad schools. Closure works only if “there’s plenty of room at terrific schools that will welcome these kids, and if it won’t disrupt those schools.” Which there isn’t.

As for the “fire half of ‘em” turnaround model, I’ll just note that firing half your employees usually isn’t a one-time solution. Most well-run outfits, private or public, don’t fire half their folks in one big bonfire, replace them, and then enjoy a miraculous transformation. Rather, weeding out mediocrity is a natural, sustained part of how they manage their team. That’s not an option here.

School improvement requires “practice, fidelity of implementation, and on-the-ground commitment” by local leaders, Hess writes. The feds can’t make that happen.

Update: Inside School Turnarounds by Laura Pappano is “a no-nonsense book delineating, sometimes in excruciating detail, the circumstances that surround genuine and courageous attempts at urban school reform,” writes Graham Down on Ed Next. Improving test scores isn’t enough, writes Pappano. “Culture, attitude and student aspirations” also must change dramatically.

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: , , , ,

Not so flat

March 11, 2011 by

Reading and math achievement have improved significantly in the last 40 years, writes Richard Rothstein on National Journal, countering Bill Gates’ charge that we’re spending more than twice as much with little to show for it. In particular, blacks have narrowed the achievement gap by improving more than whites, Rothstein points out.

Looking at long-term trends for all students on the Nation’s Report Card, nine- and 13-year-olds improved in math till 2004, when scores leveled off.  Scores for 17-year-olds leveled off in 1990. Reading scores from 1971 to 2008  improved significantly for nine-year-olds, improved slightly for 13-year-olds and did not improve for 17-year-olds.

While Rothstein concedes that education spending has doubled in real dollars, “less than half of this new money has gone to regular education (including compensatory education for disadvantaged children, programs for English-language learners, integration programs like magnet schools, and special schools for dropout recovery and prevention). Special education consumed less than 4% of all K-12 spending 40 years ago; it now consumes 21% of education dollars.

Unless No Child Left Behind is modified, 82 percent of U.S. schools could fail to meet “adequate yearly progress” targets next year, estimates Education Secretary Arne Duncan. Currently, 37 percent are failing to meet targets, but many states set achievable goals in the early years in hopes that performance would soar in the final years.  — or that the targets would be lowered.  Duncan’s credibility is under attack — will the number of AYP losers more than double in one year? — but nobody thinks the goal of 100 percent proficiency by 2014 is achievable, even with some states defining “proficiency” as “barely literate.” The Obama administration wants to set a new goal: Students will be ready for college or careers by 2020. I don’t believe in that one either. Only the lowest-performing 5 percent would face “turnaround” or “transformation.”

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Detroit: D’s and F’s turned to C’s

February 12, 2011 by

Students who’d earned D’s and F’s were given C grades on their June report cards, charges a Detroit teacher.  The Detroit Free Press reports:

Science teacher Marjorie Pasqualle struggled in her classroom at Detroit’s Durfee Elementary last year — and so did her sixth- and seventh-grade students.

She endured taunts and threats, one student slapped her face and, in a chaotic atmosphere where students weren’t learning, she turned in 94 D’s and F’s for June report cards, records show.

But documents also show that the bad grades Pasqualle gave to students were changed to C’s on report cards and computerized student records — and without her consent, she said.

Rated “unsatisfactory” for poor class control and incomplete lesson plans, Pasqualle, 62, retired at the end of the year after 9 1/2 years in the classroom. The district is investigating the grade-changing allegations. Tracy Johnson, principal at Durfee Elementary, denies authorizing changes.

Pasqualle is not the only teacher to complain that failing grades are raised to make low-performing schools look better and to avoid retaining students in the same grade.

Teacher Mary Helen D’Angelo said a principal passed about three dozen fifth-graders who failed the MEAP test and her summer math class in 2009. “She told me, ‘It must’ve been something wrong with your teaching,’ ” D’Angelo recalled recently. “They came to me with second-grade skills.”

Altering records is a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of up to $2,500, up to two years in jail and suspension of a teaching certificate. Robert Bobb, emergency financial manager for DPS, vows to fire anyone who changes a grade without the teacher’s consent. Bobb signed an order last year declaring an end to social promotion. Staff training will follow, he told the Free Press.

Teachers and union officials say there’s heavy pressure to pass students along.

In 2009, Bobb fired 33 principals at low-performing schools. In 2010, he replaced the principals and staffs at most of the 51 lowest-performing schools.

Teacher Tracy Arneau said she failed four first-graders in 2006 who were struggling readers, but the principal promoted them to second grade anyway. By fall, two of the students were placed back in first grade because they were struggling.

“They weren’t successful, fluent readers,” she said. “Passing them was a disservice to the children, the next teacher and the next class. Everybody loses.”

Pasqualle submitted computerized grade sheets in the spring that contained 68 F’s and 26 D’s. All were changed to C’s. The grades in prior marking periods — often D’s and F’s — were blanked out.

As a result, a student who’d missed 20 days of class in the semester and another who’d missed 39 days in the school year were given C grades.  So did a straight F student with 37 absences who’s accused in a police report of assaulting Pasqualle.

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: , , , , ,
«Older Posts
Newer Posts»